“Hello, welcome to Kaufman’s!” Erin’s voice was falsely cheery and grated on my self control for the umpteenth time today. There was truly only so much a retail employee could take and I imagined us both pulling out matching 5.11 knives that sales reps had forced upon us and dueling it out in the holster aisle.
Today was exactly like every other day. I folded the same pair of pants I had already folded twice today and seven or thirty-two times the day before. Anna stared dully into a cabinet memorizing the prices of everything there so than when called upon she could spout out numbers like a computer for the cashier. Anna was good with memorization, she could kick ass at that card game.
A thin tall man with curly brown hair and a small sickly looking boy with a brown bag attached to his side and the same hair walked within fifteen feet of me. I hurried to go see if I could acquire a sale and ensure that I would have a job tomorrow.
“Is there something I could help you two with?” I said putting on my brightest smile and affecting my most joyous, buy lots of expensive things that you don’t need or let me convince you that you do need them and then buy them if that’ll make you feel better voice.
“Actually yes, as you can see here my son’s colostomy bag is almost full and we were wondering if you carried the replacement bags?” he gestured to the brown bag attached to his sons side like a leach. So that’s what it was. It was okay as a retail employee you get used to all manner of body fluids. I was no colostomy bag virgin.
“Of course we do” I smiled potentially blinding the man, but if he couldn’t see I could just put things on the counter and force him to buy things. Or offer him a pair of three hundred dollar sunglasses guaranteed to mute the glare of my smile.
This was the automatic response drilled into us by Renee. She’s one of the owners and looks terrifying in and out of leather. The only time this response was proven wrong was in the case of the hot pink pipe cleaners, and this was only because a Girl Scout troop had cleaned out our entire stock minutes before. It turned out okay because Renee had already ordered more which would be there in a few hours. But even so, the shame is still with us all.
I led the man and his gross pale son with the bag of poop attached to his side to the colostomy bag aisle. “Here are adult bags, probably too big, and the girls bags,” I motioned to the Barbie and frog princess bedazzled bags, “probably not eh, but these will do.” Along half the aisle were rows of monster truck patterned bags, Aladdin, GI Joe, Buzz Lightyear and even a serial killer collage one. Under new arrivals was…
“Wall E!” the kid squealed. The new arrivals sign was a lie. Renee over ordered and we were supposed to push the Wall E bags to make room for more merchandise.
The young boy giggled delightedly holding the wall e bag in his hands. At that moment his current bag, a Spiderman one, filled so we took him to Dodee to fit him into the new on and after paying an exorbitant fee, probably three times as much as one would pay at Wall-mart, and after Erin managed to force them each to buy a pair of Oakley sunglasses for them and their pets, they were happily on their way.
I moved to the shirt wall where I proceeded to make every shirt the exact same size as all the other shirts and arranged them into a beautiful even stack that not even Renee could scowl at… though she would try.
2 comments:
The next time I visit Kaufmans I will wander the shelves looking for Colonostomy bags and react in horror when I'm told they don't have them. They should have everything!...on that note I wonder if walmart has wall-e bags....
-M
woah...I really thought for a second you carried colonostomy bags...sigh..I would have loved to buy my grandmother some cool ones. On another note - have you ever changed one - they are very complex.
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